THIS BLOG POST IS DEDICATED TO MY MATERNAL GREAT-GRANDFATHER, AUGUSTUS GARNER, WHO, BY THE LATE-1800s, WAS EXTREMELY LITERATE AND OWNED 200 ACRES OF LAND, IN MISSISSIPPI, WHICH HE LOGGED FOR TIMBER SALES. INDEED, ALMOST AN IMPOSSIBILITY. SOME OF THAT PROPERTY IS STILL OWNED BY MY FAMILY; AND I WAS SO MOVED AND PROUD, WHEN MY MOTHER TOOK ME THERE, TO SHOW ME WHAT HE HAD ACCOMPLISHED.
A jaw-dropping piece of news was broadcast in
all the media, today. Just over a week
ago – yes, a week ago, the State of
Mississippi officially ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States, which outlawed slavery … 148 years after most of the States in
the Union had done so.
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| Jackson, Mississippi State Capitol |
The amendment was passed by the U.S. Senate on April 8,
1864, and by the House of Representatives on Jan. 31, 1865. Throughout 1865, 26
states ratified the critical law; and in December of that year, the amendment
was formally adopted into U.S. law after Georgia’s approval brought the number to
the required 27.
Only slightly less astounding to today’s
news, was the disclosure that The Mississippi Legislature had actually formally
ratified the historic amendment in 1995 – no, that is not meant to read 1895.
Several states, including Kentucky and Delaware, waited decades to ratify the
amendment; but the last was Mississippi in 1995 – or so everyone thought…
The huge delay, was the result of a ‘clerical
error’, when the ratification document was never presented to the U.S. Archivist.
So, it was never deemed official.
However, amazingly, no one noticed.
According to
various news sources, the bizarre error was discovered by a pair of Mississippians,
Dr. Rajan Batra and Mr. Ken Sullivan, who, after seeing the movie, Lincoln, and
being thankfully curious about how Mississippi had reacted to the 13th
Amendment being passed, discovered the mistake when investigating at the National
Archives Office of the Federal Register. They then brought the oversight to the attention of state officials that they
had never, in fact, ratified one of the most important documents in modern
history. The government promptly sent the paperwork, and it was ‘officially
received’ and noted.
Slavery in
Mississippi dates back to the early 1700s, in the Natchez District, when the
plantation system was introduced by French colonists. The first major
crop that thrived, from African slave labor in Natchez, was tobacco. Once the
cotton gin was perfected, almost one hundred years later, the slave owners
increased their wealth through cotton production.
From the time
of their first arrival in Natchez, slaves resisted bondage. The slaves, in Natchez, often rebelled
against the cruelty of their White masters – cruelties, such as: branding,
cutting off ears, whipping and torture. Any
form of education was completely out
of the question. These rebellions made slave owners very nervous. One notable uprising was in 1731, when
African slaves and Natchez Indians were involved in a conspiracy to kill all of
the French and take over the colony. The
group was led by a slave named Samba Bambara, who was the trusted, first
officer and interpreter of a Swiss expat, living in Natchez, named Antoine Simon
Le Page du Pratz.
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| Antoine Simon Le Page du Pratz |
The rebels were not to
be successful, and were brutally punished to death.
After the
American Revolution, slaves often began to run away to either find freedom in
the northern parts of the country; or to be with family members at nearby
plantations. Runaway slaves encountered slave patrols, slave catchers, dogs,
wild animals, and unfamiliar surroundings. Desperation, starvation and fear
ultimately led many runaways to return to their masters.
Natchez became
part of the United States in 1817, when Mississippi entered the Union as a
state – despite massive resistance.
The American Civil War period also saw many
slave uprisings. The timing was no coincidence. Slaves were aware of events
outside of Natchez because the slave underground rapidly spread news from
plantation to plantation. They were eventually freed, once President Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation came into effect, in 1863. However, it was not easy sailing for
the freedmen, for decades to come.
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| Natchez, Mississippi c. 1800 |
Click here to
hear an amazing, 9-minute audio
recording of former slave, 101-year-old (in 1949) Fountain Hughes, giving his
first-hand account of being a slave. Fountain’s grandfather was the property of Thomas Jefferson and lived
to be 115-years-old.
Alcorn
State University was founded in
1871, by the Reconstruction era legislature, to provide higher education for
freedmen. Established in Lorman, Mississippi, Alcorn was the first
state-supported institution for the higher education of African-Americans, in
the United States.
Alcorn was actually founded on the site
originally occupied by Oakland College, a school for White students,
established by the Presbyterian Church. Oakland
College closed its doors at the beginning of The Civil War, so that its students could fight for
the Confederates. When the college
failed to reopen at the end of the war, the property was sold to the State of
Mississippi. It renamed the facility,
Alcorn University, in honor of James L. Alcorn, the state’s governor, in 1871
and established it as an Historically-Black college.
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| James L. Alcorn |
Hiram R. Revels resigned his seat in the
United States Senate to become Alcorn's first president. The state legislature
provided $50,000 in cash, for ten successive years, for the establishment and
overall operations of the college.
.png) |
| Hiram R. Revels |
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| Hiram Revels's credentials as State Senator |
At first, the school was exclusively for
African-American males; but in 1895, women were admitted. Today, women comprise
over 65% of the 4,000 students, from all over the world, and of all races.
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| Alcorn State University students, today |
While early graduates of Alcorn had limited
horizons, more recent alumni are successful physicians, lawyers, pharmacists,
dentists, educators, administrators, managers, and entrepreneurs.
Alcorn’s most probable famous son was civil
rights activist and Mississippian, Medgar Evers, who graduated in 1948. Medgar was involved in efforts to overturn segregation
at the University of Mississippi. He became active in the Civil Rights Movement
after returning from overseas service in World War II and completing secondary
education; he became a field secretary for the NAACP.
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| Medgar Evers wearing a protest sign |
One early morning, in June 1963, just hours
after President John F. Kennedy’s speech on national television, in
support of civil rights, Medgar pulled into his driveway, after returning from
a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts
that read, "Jim Crow Must Go," Medgar was struck in the back
with a bullet, fired by Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member
of the White Citizens’ Council (and later, the Ku Klux Klan, as well) Medgar
died at a hospital, less than an hour later. As a military veteran, Medgar was
buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, before a group of 3,000 mourners. His
murder and the resulting trials inspired civil rights protests, as well as
numerous works of art, music, and film.
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| Medgar's driveway, where he was assassinated |
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| Medgar Evers's family at his Arlington Cemetery grave |
During De La Beckwith’s first and second trials,
juries, composed solely of White men, deadlocked twice that year, on his guilt.
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| Byron De La Beckwith as a free man |
In 1994, 30 years after the two previous trials had failed to
reach a verdict, De La Beckwith was brought to trial based on new evidence.
During this trial, Medgar’s body was exhumed from his grave for an autopsy. This
time, one year before the 13th Amendment was voted to be ratified,
in the State of Mississippi, De La Beckwith was brought to justice and
convicted of murder on February 5, 1994. He had, for the most part, been living
as a free man, for the three decades following Medgar’s assassination. De La
Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died in prison, at age 80, in January
2001.
Mississippi
has had an extremely long and slow road to full acceptance of
racial integration – much longer than most.
However, I would like to think that it is still moving forward, with
institutions such as Alcorn State University; which can only be a good thing.
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| Members of One Mississippi, a group working to promote racial harmony in the State |
Sources:
Mississippi History Now, Wikipedia, Alcorn State University, Huffington Post,
NY Daily News, Ancestry.com, Google
Images, YouTube
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